Chicken Soup
by fallen for your eyes
Summary: ""They're just pancakes." She's flushed as his words and she hates herself. Hates herself for letting this happen, hates herself for feeling this way, hates herself for not being able to do anything about it." Or Eric and Nell keep owing each other dinner, but it's really just an excuse to see each other.


When she finally opens the door, Eric is standing there, acting like it's totally normal for him to be outside her apartment on a Tuesday evening. If she wasn't so sick she would have given it more thought but instead she stares at him and tries not to sneeze.

"I brought chicken soup." He holds up a bag, and she remembers that she hasn't eaten anything in three days except stale crackers.

"You can make soup?" She asks. She walks back to her cocoon she made in the couch and lets him decide what to do with the soup.

"No. But the deli down the street from me that you love does, so I thought I would give it a try." He stops and turns to her. "How are you feeling?"

She glares at him from her cocoon and he nods. "Right. The flu sucks. Do you want some soup now, or some tea? Hetty gave me her get-well-soon blend. She only gives that out to people she really likes."

"Um-" she's interrupted by a sneeze, and he tosses a new box of tissues at her.

"I ran out of all my tissues within the first 48 hours, so I picked some up on my way over."

"Eric?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing?"

He stops moving around her kitchen and brings her a cup of tea. "I'm checking up on my best girl." He smiles at her, and walks back to the kitchen again.

"Your best girl?"

"You know what I mean. You checked up on me when I had the flu so I thought I would return the favor."

She takes a sip of the tea and it might be wishful thinking but she feels better. "I don't think skyping you because I was stuck really constitutes as checking up on you."

He shrugs. "I gave you the flu, so since I am now immune I thought it would be nice to give you company. The worst thing about being sick is being lonely."

"How did Hetty know you were coming?"

"Hetty knows everything." He settles down next to her and pulls her close so he can wrap an arm around her.

She knows he's in dangerous territory, both from sickness and from his heart. He's too nice to her. Nell isn't blind. She knows how Eric feels about her but she doesn't know how she really feels about him, but he brought her chicken soup because she's sick. It's so cliché and adorable that she almost feels like she's dreaming.

"You didn't have to come over." She can hear his heart beat even through her blanket cocoon.

"Yeah, but I wanted too." He kisses her hair, and maybe it's the tea, or maybe it's the company but Nell feels 10 times better than she had in the past three days.

xXx

Once she's better, she figures she might as well return the favor. He's not sick, but she knows some nights he forgets to eat dinner because sometimes he more of a mess than a human being.

His door swings open and he's standing in front of her, shirtless, covered in what looks like flour.

"It's not what it looks like." He says, holding up his hands in surrender.

"What exactly does it look like?" she asks. She pushes her way inside to find most of his apartment covered in the same flour he is.

"You know, I don't actually know what it looks like, what do you think it does?"

"Eric?"

He sighs and closes the door. "I tried to make a pizza."

"And?"

"Well, I tried to open the flour and well, it exploded."

"And your shirt?"

"I might have burned it trying to make pasta."

Nell tries her best to keep a straight face but she can't. Nell also tries her best not to look at his chest but she can't do that either.

She already knows she's attracted to him. He's not the type of guy she usually goes for, and she doesn't need his stupid naked chest for her to come to terms with shit she already knows.

"Go put a shirt on."

"You sure you want me to?"

Most of the time Eric Beale is a mess of a human being who can barely flirt with her, but then there are times when he can, and she doesn't know what to do with herself.

Because she usually goes after guys who are more like the rest of the team. Built, confident, maybe a little bit cocky. So when Eric can actually flirt with her, especially when standing half naked in front of her, her already confused feelings become even more confused.

She walks up to him, close enough so she can hear his breath pick up when she places a hand on his shoulder.

"Yes, Eric. I brought dinner and I really think you should put on a shirt." She wipes some of the flour off his chest, and he all but stumbles out of the room to get a shirt.

They clean the kitchen before she pulls out the Thai food and he looks like he's about to kiss at least three times before she leaves.

"Thanks for the food. I don't know what I would have done without you." He says. He's walking her to the door, and for a second, she feels like she doesn't want to leave. But she has to. They have work in the morning, and there's no reason for her to stay.

"No problem. I was just returning the favor for the other night." She reaches up and pulls him into a hug, maybe so she can stay for just another second, or maybe because her brain is telling her to get her head out of her ass and realize she probably likes him for more than just his stupid attractive face.

She pulls back and he smiles at her. "Looks like we missed some flour," His hand reaches out and brushes her cheek. He's going to kiss her. She can feel it, but she can't find it within herself to stop him.

He's going to kiss her and she's going to kiss him back.

But he doesn't.

He pulls his arm back and dusts off his hand. "See you tomorrow, partner."

Nell leaves not really knowing what she feels about Eric Beale and cursing his stupidly attractive face.

xXx

Eric's name flashes on her phone, and Nell has to force her eyes away from the stupid movie on T.V.

It's a Friday night, and she's drinking, alone, and watching cheesy, terrible Hallmark movies. The one she is currently watching one of the worst she's ever seen, and she somehow got invested in it. But Eric texted her. Either it's an emergency, or he's drunk, which could be more entertaining than the stupid movie on the screen.

 _Are you busy?_

He's too coherent to be drunk, and he doesn't ask that when there's an emergency, so she nearly ignores it.

But it's Eric. Anything he has to say would be more entertaining than the lead actress running into the arms of the love interest.

 _Nope._

Before she even has time to take another sip of her wine, someone bangs on the door. Eric strolls in when she opens the door, like it's something they always do, and drops a kiss to her cheek as he makes his way to the kitchen.

"I hope you haven't eaten yet." He says, pulling things out of the shopping bag he brought with him.

She's frozen in place, her brain still trying to process the kiss he planted on her cheek. That's something new for them. She knows it's a thing some friends do, but the extent of their touches were usually reassuring hugs and sometimes punching each other's arms. Never casual kisses on the cheek as a form of hello.

"What were you going to do if I answered yes?" She says instead of what she is thinking. Her brain is still a muddle of kisses and his walking in so casually. It shouldn't even bother her that much, because she uses the spare key he gave her to storm into his apartment when she wants company all the time.

"Hmm? Oh, I was going to run back to my car and hope your neighbors didn't call the police."

"Hmm." She walks over to him and grabs the bottle of wine from the bag. "What's your plan?"

He grins at her before taking the wine so he can open it. "So I had a craving for those chicken sandwiches we had last month, but I didn't feel like going to the restaurant by myself, so I thought, hey why don't a try to cook them, when I realized that I can't make pasta without burning my shirt. So I bought all of the stuff, and was like, hey, I owe Nell dinner, and she can cook! So I'm here, and I bought chicken cutlets."

She pours herself another glass of wine and passes one to him before she takes out the pan.

"Think you can keep your shirt on this time?" She says. She's not looking at him, but she knows his ears are probably red and he's probably struggling to open the jar of peppers.

Good, she thinks to herself. It's what he deserves for making her so flustered before.

By the time they finish cooking, she's a little wine drunk and more than a little sleepy. It's bad enough that the voice in her head that usually tells her not to think of Eric as anything more than just Eric is silent. Silent enough that when he leans forward while telling her his story that her brain tells her to close the distance.

She stops herself just before she moves.

But Eric's still talking, and moving his arms around his head to emphasis his words and he's smiling at her.

"What?" He stops, his head tilted to the side, looking at her, his smile never wavering.

She stops herself from staring at his lips and his smile grows even more.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

She's been caught, but she doesn't know what to do about it. Instead, she pummels him with a pillow and tells him to continue the story before she kicks him out. Even though she is much closer to asking him to stay the night than leave.

But she doesn't know how to do that so instead she tells him to put on a movie and falls asleep in his lap, hoping maybe he would stay the night anyway.

xXx

She makes chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.

Nell didn't really expect him to still be there when she woke up, but he was. It makes her almost giddy in a way, but she knows it's because she had trapped him as her pillow and he really had no other choice.

She halfway through the second batch when he wakes up, stumbling into her kitchen, his body stretched by a yawn.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep." His voice is still racked with sleep, and his hair is more of a mess than usual, and it makes her smile.

"Don't sweat it. Now I get to pay you back for dinner." She tosses the last of the pancakes onto a plate and places it on the table.

He yawns again before pulling the syrup out of her cabinet and stacking four pancakes onto his plate.

"At this rate we'll owe each other forever." He says. He moans when he takes a bite and Nell is one again struck with how attractive he is, and how maybe she wouldn't mind if she was making breakfast for him after he stayed over for a different reason.

"Holy crap, Nell these are amazing."

"They're just pancakes." She's flushed as his words and she hates herself. Hates herself for letting this happen, hates herself for feeling this way, hates herself for not being able to do anything about it.

"No, I would buy you dinner all the time if you would make these pancakes again." He reaches for more as he talks.

"Planning on having another sleep over?"

He drops the fork. It clatters to the table, and it's the only sound she can hear expect for her heart beat.

They do this all the time at work. Flirt with each other, fluster each other, tease each other until one of them backs down and they get back to work.

But there's no work for them to get back too.

"That depends - is the offer open?"

It's her turn to feel flustered now. Even though his ears are still red and he can't seem to pick up the fork.

"I don't know; you may have to buy me dinner first."

The tension in the room disappears and Nell thinks maybe they're clear. Maybe they can ignore the flat-out flirting they are doing at 9 am on a Saturday in her apartment.

"Name a date, and I'm yours."

This time she nearly knocks over the milk. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to be over this part.

"Are you asking me out on a date, Beale?" The words escape her mouth before she fully understands what she's saying. He pales, and stares at his plate for a second too long.

"Do you want me to be, Jones?" He finally looks up at her, and she has to catch her breath. She's used to Eric, used to being attracted to his stupid face, but she's not used to Eric Beale's face possibly asking her on a date at 9 am on a Saturday morning. Somehow he's even more stupidly pretty than usual.

"Maybe."

"Then it's a date."

They eat the rest of their pancakes in silence, and when she walks him to the door, he gives her another hug and this time, she wants to be the one who kisses him, but she feels like wherever they are is too delicate to be drastic. So she settles for a hug.

xXx

It takes him until after ice cream to finally kiss her. He tastes like mint chocolate chip and sprinkles and it takes all of her will power to not make out with him in the middle of the pier. Instead she settles for this, this brief and stupidly short kiss with only one hand to grab his hair with, because her other is too busy holding an ice cream cone.

She grabs his hand and runs with him back to her apartment. Her hands are shaking so badly she nearly drops the keys to the door because she's waited so long to actually kiss him and she's not settling with one kiss. She wants more, she needs more.

Nell want to know what Eric tastes like when she kisses her way down his chest. She wants to know what sound he makes when she bites his collar bone, wants to know how his hips feel against hers.

Nell wants everything from him, and from the way he's smiling at her, she thinks maybe he wants everything from her too.

"You know," she says, pressing her lips to his neck as her hands fumble along the edge of her shirt. "I never thought I'd day this, but thank God for the flu."

He laughs, dragging her lips back up to his, his hands sliding up her back, his teeth pulling her lip.

"More like thank God for chicken soup."

It doesn't take long after that for her to get everything she wants.


End file.
